Terra Incognita

by Ruth Downie

  “You never know how long the gods will allow you in this world,” said Tilla. “At least try to send a message to him.”

  Veldicca bent and kissed the sleeping baby on the forehead. “I will think about it,” she said.

  It was a concession. Tilla acknowledged it with silence, stretching her legs out in the grass and watching a white butterfly dancing above the vegetable patch. Moments later the child noticed it too and ran over to chase it away.

  Veldicca said, “So, tell me. We heard you were killed. Then we heard a rumor you were alive. Surely you have not been all this time with the northerners?”

  “Two years in Trenus’s household that are best forgotten,” Tilla said. “Then I went south and lived much better in the lands of the Cornovii.” That was true, if misleading. The Roman fort at Deva was on stolen Cornovii land. “They are a good people.” That was more honest: She had made friends in the surrounding villages.

  Veldicca laid a hand on hers. “It is good to have you home.”

  “There were times when I thought I would never see home again.”

  “Trenus should have been punished.”

  “Instead I hear he is invited to dine with the governor.”

  Veldicca said, “You remember Dari, the girl both your brothers lay with in one night?”

  “Big breasts and small brain.”

  “She is working over in the town now. Selling drinks and pastries to soldiers and their families.”

  “At Susanna’s?”

  “You have met Susanna?”

  “My friend is lodging there.”

  They exchanged news of other mutual friends and acquaintances: of births and deaths, weddings and betrayals and divorces. All the news Rianorix had not thought interesting enough to tell her. Finally Veldicca asked if she was married.

  Tilla shook her head. “My life is complicated.”

  “Mine also,” said Veldicca. “Now you are here, will you stay?”

  Tilla paused to dip the apple in the mead and lick it. “That depends. I have not seen my cousin yet. Or my uncle. I hear they are living over by the fort.”

  “You will be surprised. Your uncle Catavignus is a rich man now. He is leader of the guild of caterers.”

  “The what?”

  “They worship Apollo-Maponus, the god who pleases everybody. He has one Roman name and one of ours.”

  “I did not know my uncle was religious.”

  “Nor did anyone else,” said Veldicca. “But I hear the caterers hold some very fine dinners and are loyal to the emperor. And of course they all help one another. They buy whatever beer Cativignus has left after he has supplied the soldiers. I hear he is having a grand house in the Roman style built up on the hill.”

  “I have seen the house on the hill. It is just a hole in the ground.”

  “Really? I had thought from what your cousin Aemilia said—”

  “You know Aemilia.” Tilla dipped the apple again. “I am surprised to hear she is not yet married.”

  “Hah! Did my brother not tell you what all this is about?”

  “He said he is sworn to protect—surely not Aemilia?”

  “Of course it’s Aemilia! I told you, he is a fool. Now see where it has got him.”

  Tilla listened in silence as her friend explained how Aemilia had been convinced that a soldier had promised to marry her. “And this false soldier is the one who died?”

  Veldicca nodded. “Felix, the man my brother cursed. So whoever killed him, Rianorix will be in trouble for it and Aemilia will be the cause.”

  Tilla shook her head. It was plain that Aemilia had not changed.

  “I hear Catavignus still has hopes of marrying her to a centurion,” said Veldicca.

  “After this, about as likely as your family’s hopes of marrying you to that blacksmith.”

  Veldicca sniffed. “I should have listened.”

  “Your soldier was not a good husband?”

  “It turned out he had more patience with his bees than with his woman.” Veldicca ran one mud-ingrained fingertip along the scar on her cheek. “This is what happened when I left his boots to dry by the fire and the leather went hard. I could show you others.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “But last winter he died of a fever. So now I do what I want.”

  Tilla glanced toward the beehives. “Now you are the beekeeper.”

  “I am the bee-loser. Whatever he was, that man knew how to charm the bees. After he died one swarm went and left no king, and another died of cold in the winter when I forgot to feed them. This is the last of the mead. I am glad to celebrate your homecoming with it.”

  Tilla glanced down at the sleeping child. “I have seen your brother’s house, Veldicca. It is difficult for one man to manage alone. The house is very untidy and he lives on bought food and beer and lets other men’s ideas grow around him with no one to show him any sense.”

  “My brother made his choice. I made mine.”

  “And are you content?”

  “Which of us is ever content?”

  Tilla watched the hens pecking at the grass. “I have a friend in the army,” she said. “I will ask his help to release your brother.”

  “I will pray for your success. Then you can go and sort out his house and his ideas. See if he thanks you.”

  The baby stirred, opened a pair of deep brown eyes, and crinkled her small face as if she did not like what she had just seen. Veldicca unpinned her tunic and put the child to her breast just as it began to cry.

  “So,” said Tilla, looking around, “how will you live without the wages of your angry soldier? Two hens, a little honey, and a few herbs for sale are not going to keep you through the winter. You have no cow. You do not even have a goat.”

  “I have a little saved. Perhaps I shall buy a cockerel and become the champion hen breeder of Coria.”

  “But—”

  “And if I grow tired of hens,” Veldicca continued, “I will find myself a blacksmith. Or maybe a centurion.”

  34

  THESSALUS WAS ASLEEP. Over at the infirmary, there was no one in the office. The cobweb above the pharmacy table was gone, the wastebasket was empty, and the green pancake had been scraped off the floorboards. A lone bottle with no label rested on the desk. Ruso picked it up, removed the stopper, and sniffed at the brown powder inside.

  An orderly with strands of straw caught in his hair—presumably Gambax had assigned him to stuffing mattresses—wandered in and told him the deputy had gone to fetch some stationery supplies.

  No doubt finding a clean stock of labeling materials would occupy him until lunchtime. It was a pity Albanus was not here to start investigating the rest of the paperwork. Ruso put the bottle back where he had found it. Gambax seemed to know what he was doing, even if he was doing it painfully slowly. Ruso had once had the misfortune to work with an apprentice pharmacist who had decided to tear off all the labels at once, throw them into the fire, and start again.

  As he left the office the trumpet sounded the next watch. There was still no sign of Albanus. Ruso would have suspected most men of deliberately spinning out his missions to find out about Thessalus’s night call and track down Tilla, but not Albanus. The clerk’s deeply rooted sense of duty would compel him to get on with the job and report back, even if it did mean facing the rest of the day in the office with Gambax. No: It was far more likely that Tilla was proving elusive.

  Just as he reached this conclusion, the clerk reappeared. He was not happy.

  “Every door in the town, sir,” said Albanus, slumping back against the table in the treatment room. “Every single door. And I explained that I’d been sent by an officer. In case they thought I was hunting down a runaway girlfriend.”

  “Very wise.”

  “I had to stop telling people you were a doctor,” he said. “Some of them wanted to tell me what was wrong with them.” He winced. “One even wanted me to look at it.”

  “I know,” agreed Ruso. “That’s wh
y I don’t tell them either.”

  “A couple of them said they wouldn’t talk to me because a doctor had murdered that trumpeter they found in the alley.”

  “Really?” said Ruso. Evidently Thessalus’s confession was no longer a secret. He wondered whether anybody had told Metellus.

  “Then some ignorant clod in the vehicle repair shop said if I was snooping around his woman I would end up in the alley too. And some people wouldn’t talk to me at all. I suppose they were hoping for a bribe.”

  “Probably,” said Ruso, wondering how the news about Thessalus had leaked out.

  “But I didn’t have any money, sir,” the clerk pointed out, clearly feeling his officer did not appreciate the difficulty of the fool’s errand on which he had wasted most of the morning. “And I had no idea she might be using a native name.”

  “Albanus,” said Ruso, who had forgotten to warn his clerk beforehand that Tilla’s current name had only been adopted after he met her, “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right, sir.”

  “Never mind. I think neither of us knows quite how things work around here.”

  “I think it helps if you’re Batavian, sir.”

  This was not encouraging. “Apparently I have to go down to the bathhouse and face a clinic full of the Batavians’ friends and relations. I can’t think of a good excuse not to go.”

  Albanus seemed to be on the verge of coming up with one when Gambax put his head around the door frame of the treatment room to announce that he had put together a box of the sort of medicines and dressings Doctor Thessalus usually took with him. The regular assistant was on leave but he had assigned a bandager to clinic duty. Clearly, to back out now would be a sign of weakness. No Batavian was going to be allowed to accuse him of that.

  Albanus, offered a choice of activities, decided that despite his complaints he would rather resume the search for Tilla than face the ailing families of the Batavians. “While you’re out,” suggested Ruso, handing him some small change, “just listen out for any gossip about the murder, will you?”

  Albanus’s eyes widened. “Are you doing another investigation, sir?”

  “No,” said Ruso. “I’m just trying to help Doctor Thessalus. Officer Metellus is . . . it’s ah . . . it’s just that there seem to be some rumors going around that may be . . .”

  He stopped. If he told Albanus the rumors were false, the clerk would quite reasonably want to know what the truth was. And since almost everything about this wretched business was supposed to be a secret, Ruso would not be able to tell him. Finally he said, “What have you heard?”

  Albanus was apologetic. He had not heard anything new, apart from the suggestion that a doctor had been the murderer, which was obviously ridiculous. “And I spoke to lots of gate guards but I still can’t find anyone who remembers what time Doctor Thessalus came back in that night, sir. Or where he went. Several of them told me where I could go, though. I’m not doing very well, am I?”

  “Never mind,” said Ruso. “Have you mentioned any of this to anybody?”

  Albanus observed glumly that he didn’t know anybody to mention anything to.

  “Good. Don’t discuss the murder. Just let me know anything you happen to pick up.”

  35

  THE DESIGNATED BANDAGER for this morning’s clinic was the oversized Ingenuus, from whom Ruso rapidly discovered that the rumor about Thessalus’s confession had reached the infirmary. Ruso’s attempt to trace the source produced a list of names. To his relief none were infirmary staff. Maybe Thessalus had repeated his confession to his guard. Whatever the source, Metellus would have to deal with it. As they tramped out of the east gate in the direction of the bathhouse, the big man was eager to insist that nobody believed a word of it.

  “Somebody should have arrested that local when he started playing up in the bar, sir. We’re too soft with ’em, that’s the trouble. You can’t treat a barbarian like a civilized man. They can’t understand it. You have to think of them like dogs. They need to know who’s boss.”

  “So why do you think Doctor Thessalus might have confessed?” asked Ruso, “If he has.”

  “Ah, but has he, sir?” said Ingenuus, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “That’s what they want us to think.”

  Ruso returned the nod of the owner of We Sell Everything. “What who want you to think?” he said, wondering what the distant shouting was about. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the river.

  “The officers, sir,” said Ingenuus, shifting the weight of his box of medicines to get a better grip.

  “I really don’t think that’s very likely.”

  “They put that story out before they found that native to arrest, just to stop us thinking it might be the Stag Man. But if it wasn’t the Stag Man, why wouldn’t they let us see the body?”

  Fortunately he did not wait for an answer before continuing. “Doctor Thessalus is off sick and he’s leaving anyway, so it won’t matter what they accuse him of, will it?”

  Evidently the military rumor mill had been turning at quite a rate this morning. “He’s certainly ill,” said Ruso, moving onto safer ground. “Have you noticed him behaving oddly lately?”

  “He’s been looking a bit tired, sir. And he’s a bit forgetful. Sometimes he forgets he’s on duty and we have to fetch him. But that’s no reason to blame him for murdering Felix.”

  The commotion was growing louder. “I’m looking into the arrangements for night calls,” said Ruso, who wasn’t, but supposed that as part of his overhaul of the infirmary he should be. “You don’t happen to know where Doctor Thessalus was called out to on the night of the murder, do you?”

  Ingenuus looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know where he went, sir. He was supposed to be on duty. But when I went to remind him, his door was locked and he didn’t answer.”

  “So who was working at the infirmary that night? Gambax?”

  “It was a quiet night, sir. Me and one of the orderlies managed on our own.”

  “I see.” Ingenuus had understandably chosen not to call on Gambax if he didn’t have to. “That was until Doctor Thessalus got back?”

  Ingenuus coughed. “That was until Gambax came on duty in the morning, sir. I expect Doctor Thessalus went straight to bed.”

  “I see.”

  “We’d have called him if we needed him,” insisted Ingenuus. “He’s a good man. And a good doctor. He wouldn’t hurt anybody. Speaking frankly, sir, not everybody in the Tenth thinks you can cure the sick with cold baths and—” He broke off. “What’s that?”

  This time they had both heard the blare of an alarm horn.

  “Come on, sir!” urged Ingenuus, breaking into a run. “Someone’s in trouble!”

  Ruso sprinted after him, grasping the hilt of his knife. There was more shouting. He could hear the medicines rattling in the box as Ingenuus lumbered along ahead of him. The alarm sounded again. They turned onto another street. Other men were running in the same direction. One of them yelled something at him and he shouted, “What?” as they joined them, but nobody answered. Ingenuus was towering over the rest of the mob, still clutching the box, and dodging around an old man waving a stick. What brought Ruso to a lone halt moments later was the sudden realization that the old man had not been shouting encouragement to the pursuers, but the words, “They’re in here! Come back!”

  The mob disappeared around the corner with a trail of small boys and dogs in its wake.

  “In there, officer!” cried the old man, jabbing his stick toward another of the narrow alleyways.

  Inside the depths of the alley a knot of men was lurching about, cursing and grunting in some kind of struggle.

  Ruso drew his knife. Around him, the street was deserted apart from the old man and a woman clutching a toddler in each hand.

  “You get ’em, sir!” urged the man. “I’ll call for help!”

  Ruso glanced at the medical case in his left hand. “Look after that for me,” he said, dropp
ing it at the feet of the old man. Then he took a deep breath, yelled, “You four men, follow me. Audax, take the others around to the far end and cut them off!” and charged.

  Faces turned toward him in alarm. The curses were louder as the knot rapidly disentangled itself and three or four plaid-trousered natives fled, escaping from the far end of the alley. Left behind, writhing on the ground, was a figure in Batavian uniform.

  The man was wild-eyed, clutching at his chest, shaking his head and gasping for air as if he were drowning. Ruso looked for blood and failed to find any.

  “Have you swallowed something?” asked Ruso, kneeling beside him and running through the possibilities. Choking. Poison. Stab wounds to the lungs. Heart failure. All sorts of things that could kill a man while a doctor was still trying to work out what he was dealing with.

  The man shook his head in denial and pushed him away.

  “I’m a doctor. Where are you hurt?”

  The man jabbed a finger toward his abdomen.

  “Stomach punch?” said Ruso, hopefully.

  The man nodded.

  “You’re winded,” said Ruso, relieved. “Curl up into a crouch. Don’t worry, it’ll settle down in a minute.”

  While the soldier was recovering his breath the shouting by the river reached a crescendo and then seemed to die down. Ruso glanced out of both ends of the alley into peaceful streets. There was no sign of the man’s attackers, nor of any other assault upon the town. Ruso went back to the victim just to make sure there wasn’t an injury he had missed.

  The soldier was now beginning to take in some air but his face still suggested that he was not in a fit state to listen to the old man’s account of how he had seen three of them natives grab him off the street and bundle him into an alley and how he’d have come after them himself if the officer hadn’t turned up.

  Neither man, fortunately, had yet noticed what Ruso had seen scratched in stark black charcoal on the grubby lime wash of the wall above the victim: a line sketch of a two-legged figure with antlers sprouting from his head.